Prioritizing R&D Activities in Construction Project: NGNP Lessons Learned

1. Prioritizing R&D Activities in Construction Project: NGNP Lessons Learned David Petti Director, VHTR Technology Development Office April 2011

2. Outline • Requirements Definition • Risk Management Technology Development Roadmaps • Technology Readiness Level Examples • R&D Plans • Schedules • Execution

3. Understanding Requirements is Critical

4. Risk Management • Technology Development Roadmaps • Identifies key risks for each technology • Uses technology readiness levels to map activities onto readiness scale • Uses technology development activities to establish a roadmap timeline • Links successful completion of specific activities that mitigate key risks • Increases readiness while reducing risk

5. How Much Risk is Acceptable? Probability Consequence

6. Design maturity aligned to technology readiness to reduce risk

7. R&D Plans • For each component/system/technology develop a detailed plan of activities required to move the technology from where it is today to where it needs to be for the project • Develop detailed schedule of activities • Develop associated resources required for the activities • Develop durations for each activity Thus, you have a resource-loaded life-cycle schedule for each piece of R&D • Update as needed

8. Sample high level fuel schedule

9. TDRM for Fuels as an Example

10. Development of Project Schedule Engineering • Establish WBS, WBS Dictionary etc. • Link all R&D life-cycle schedules into the master project schedule • Develop interfaces between R&D activities and key project drivers: • Data needed for preliminary and final design • Data for design verification • Data for safety analysis/licensing • This is an enormous time-intensive activity to make sure everything is correct • Schedule might be 20 to 50 pages long depending on level • Overly simplified schedule developed from detailed PRIMAVERA schedule R&D Licensing

11. Optimize the Schedule to Meet Project Objectives and then Execute • Understand critical paths • If cannot meet key project deadlines, iterate • Can more money reduce schedule duration? • Can different approaches reduce duration? • Can activities that are in series be done in parallel to reduce schedule? • Can Project live with the delay? • Having well thought out plans can help this a phase a lot • Plan the work and work the plan. This is the hard part… • Using earned value management as a tool to communicate status to higher level management

12. Prioritization • Based on critical path and state of the technology • In some cases R&D can proceed in advance of the design (qualifying operating envelopes for fuels, graphite and materials) and in other cases the design needs to proceed the R&D • Low TRLs (e.g. IHX for NGNP) will require a lot of time to develop and is thus high risk • Neutrons – testing of irradiated components take a long time given the limited number of reactors and hot cells

13. Using TDRMs to advance TRLs and reduce risk